Resistance

GERMAR RUDOLF, RESISTANCE IS OBLIGATORYappointed any longer if our scientific theories are overthrown.” – Orso one should think...In his pioneering epistemological work The Logic of Scientific Discovery,Popper presented the logical and mathematical proof that it isimpossible to establish even the probable truthfulness of a thesis. Withhis interdisciplinary capabilities, he was as good as predestined to writesuch a work. His presentation can be briefly summarized as follows: Inorder to determine the probable proximity of a theory to the truth, wewould first have to know the precise location of that truth, but this isprecisely what we do not know. From this, Popper deduces: 78“I think that we shall have to get accustomed to the idea that wemust not look upon science as a ‘body of knowledge,’ but rather as asystem of hypotheses; that is to say, as a system of guesses or anticipationswhich in principle cannot be justified, but with which wework as long as they stand up to tests, and of which we are neverjustified in saying that we know that they are true’ or ‘more or lesscertain’ or even ‘probable’.”As an illustration of how insecure our presumed knowledge really is,I refer to the already mentioned example of our present astronomicalconcept of the universe.The geocentric concept of the universe, repeatedly accepted and confirmedfor over 2,000 years, was considered to be “true,” or due to itsfrequent and long-lasting reliability at least as “probable,” until a singleresearcher demolished the theory with a unique opinion: Nicolaus Copernicus. Copernicus, who was defended by Galileo Galilei against JohannesKepler, was mistaken on some points; Kepler and Galilei in turn were corrected and improved by Newton; Newton, who was long considered irrefutable, was in turn “relativized”by Einstein and proven to describe a special case and hence amere approximation.However, there is little cause for complacency. The latest discoveriesin physics, based among other things on interstellar and intergalacticphenomena such as the speed of satellites Pioneer 10 and 11, as well asproblems with the theory of gravity, are now challenging this conceptionof the universe as well. I do not want to go into detail at this point,as I intend to discuss it later in greater detail, but this example demon-78Karl R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Hutchinson & Co., London 1968, p. 317.65